Page 103 - Secondary School BEATS

Shadows of Skull Drain

It all began with a single body. Some The man was lying dead in a corner, his
businessman working for Babel Corp. went blood oozing onto the ground, and upon
missing one night and turned up dead in him lay a creature more horrifying than one
an alleyway a few days later. A few random could ever imagine. With my own eyes I saw
murders were a thing to be expected in a an extremely tall, skeletal being, draped in
city with such an active nightlife as Babylon, gray skin, tearing the corpse apart with its
but this one was different. When I found his razor sharp serrated claws. Its eyes, no larger
body, it was as pale as winter snow. All of his than a walnut, innumerable in number,
blood had been drained out, his tendons shone with a light that cut through the
slashed with a serrated blade. Whoever the darkness around it. I was certain that they
perpetrator was, had clearly intended to showed nothing but the being’s immense
torture their victim. hatred for all that is living. No weapon of
any kind could kill this beast.
My detective’s intuition led me out into the Within a second something changed within
night to look for more clues myself. For a me, as if some primordial fear had awoken
fiend such as this, one victim would likely itself. I began to run away, caring naught for
not be enough. For five nights, I loitered the cover of shadows. The further I got, the
around the darkness laden alleyways of the more the dread set in. My body realized that
city. For five nights, I saw nothing. On the it had already seen me.
6th night however, something happened. A
drunk old man walked into an alley that led - Anonymous
to a dead end and never walked out. In
suspicion, I dove after him, slipping from
one shadow to another to avoid detection.
Yet, what I saw made me regret this very
choice.

ARTWORK BY

SHREYAS GHOSH

(DP 1)

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